Who dares to say that Haakon, Stromgald Scourge cannot be played?! Who dares try to fight the lord of the dead?! All who have fought thus far are no longer. The army of the dead will come through and obliterate everything in its path. If you feel you are worthy, then we are ready. But be warned, no one has passed our test. You either kneel in life, or serve in death. Either way, your life is forfeit.

This video shows everything I want from this deck. A battlefield full of their dead warriors, showing how superior death is to life. Kings and proud fighters running for their life because they realize they are no match. I want players to look at the battlefield with nothing more than exhaustion and relief that they are still alive which will be drained when they see that death no longer has meaning. The Night King's army can do nothing but grow. I stare into their eyes, seeing complete hopelessness.

Hello all and welcome to my Haakon, Stromgald Scourge EDH deck! I know what you're thinking, Haakon? But the answer is YES! Haakon, Stromgald Scourge can in fact be played in commander! In fact, once he finally hits the battlefield he is actually a pretty powerful commander. I am a person that loves playing with underrated and underestimated cards, and when I saw Haakon I knew I wanted to play him. I tried in modern first (From the grave my knights will arise. HAIL HAAKON!, and now onto EDH. This deck is meant to abuse ETB triggers, mainly discard effects, to stall my opponents until I get to do what I want to do, which is to cast all of the creatures that I discarded.

There is only way to get Haakon, Stromgald Scourge into play. You must first draw or tutor for Command Beacon to put it into your hand. Then, you discard it into the graveyard to start your deck. This deck comes with plenty of discard and tutor so none of this should be a problem.

These cards are essential to the deck. Without these the deck basically has a lot of "bad" creatures that don't do much on their own. When either is played, you name Knight so that Haakon, Stromgald Scourge can allow you to recast any and all creatures that are put into the graveyard. This allows us to abuse the ETB and death triggers of a lot of the "bad" creatures that makes them become much better when used multiple times. For example
Rotting Rats
doesn't do much just to discard one card, especially turn two. However, being able to recast it multiple times in one turn, it becomes much better as I can effectively remove multiple resources from my opponents hands. Most decks can discard the one card in their hand which isn't that effective, but not many can discard 3-5 and still be able to function well.

So Necrotic Ooze is just a great card. One particularly good combo with him is getting Razaketh, the Foulblooded into the graveyard. With Entomb in the deck, you can potentially have a continuous Grim Tutor by turn four. Sacrificing creatures is in no way a true drawback with the way I have made this deck.

This card is definitely an auto-include. The way this one works the best is when it enters the battlefield and the first trigger is on the stack (the one that exiles a creature), you sacrifice it with any outlet BEFORE THE FIRST TRIGGER RESOLVES. When it leaves play the second trigger goes onto the stack (the one that returns a creature) above the first trigger. The second trigger resolves first, but with no creature exiled nothing returns. The first one resolves and the creature is exiled for good. A great way to fight off decks that recur their creatures easily.

GRAVEYARD HATE!! This must be stopped in it's tracks immediately. Rest in Peace, Leyline of the Void, Relic of Progenitus, and Grafdigger's Cage are the main ones that come to mind. The deck becomes much slower and the creatures lose so much viability that the deck falters and fades. I have included Oblivion Stone and All Is Dust to attempt to rid my opponents of these types of cards once they hit the battlefield, but their is no guarantee they resolve, or fix the problem altogether. Many decks can recur those types of cards with Eternal Witness, or artifact recursion.
Agent of Erebos
somewhat helps there, but again, no guarantee. Hopefully we get started so that they are minimal in effect, but that is nothing more than a hopeful assumption.

The way I have tried to rectify this problem is with Sadistic Sacrament, Bitter Ordeal, and Gonti, Lord of Luxury. Each of these cards allow me, in some way, shape, or form, to look at my opponent's library to try and take out problem cards. They can all also be recurred with Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed. I feel like I have a solid wall of protection with the discard engines plus these preventive cards.

Trying to follow up on the Game of Thrones theme here, it is time to introduce you to the "Ice Dragon" that everyone keeps talking about. I am more inclined to just called it the Zombie Dragon as it didn't look like it shot ice, just blue fire.

At first Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon held this spot, but looking over this deck Skithiryx didn't fit well. Most people automatically target infect players, and I already have other regenerate effects for Necrotic Ooze. Now Kokusho can definitely be a SWEET zombie dragon. His death trigger is amazing, and with this deck, HE KEEPS COMING BACK! Something that can arguably be more powerful, more synergetic with the deck, and still on theme.

I must give credit to EternalBrewmaster and his deck Haakon, the Mountain that Rides [[Primer]]. His deck was the frame for mine. I already wanted to make a deck that involved Haakon, Stromgald Scourge, but I never really thought it through to truly build a full deck. After seeing EternalBrewmaster's deck it gave me the push to finally create the deck I've always wanted. His deck is much stronger as he decided to go a heavy combo route which made it to be able to compete in stronger metas. I purposefully slowed the deck down to fit my meta and make the deck more grindy. His deck is still worth taking a look at if you're interested in your own Haakon build.

Updates

Comments

EternalBrewmaster - Just wanted to tag you to see the final product. I purposefully slowed the deck down because my meta is in no way competitive. I was interested what you thought being that yours was the frame for mine. I decided to keep the Korlash, Heir to Blackblade combo, but the rest is just control through reanimation. Let me know what you think and/or any suggestions. Thanks for the inspiration man.

September 3, 2017
1:29 p.m.

First of all, thanks for the credit and for putting your own unique flair into this. You have some really spicy includes and I love that you kept the GoT theme but made it your own, especially the zombie dragon and Night King references; Haakon is totally great as the NK!

One thing about my deck: I didn't mean mine was intended for cEDH at all, just that it wasn't a joke deck like most of the previous Haakon decks that just played all the shitty black knights and had no interesting intentional design about them. My deck is totally casual as there is no colorless mana ramp or rocks in it and far fewer sorcery speed tutors than a cEDH deck would have. I just meant that my deck should be able to contend in a normal multiplayer environment where people play high-level casual decks. The main element of these decks that enables that is the resilience created by the graveyard strategy. It doesn't really matter how many times they boardwipe you, you should always be able to come back.

One thing about your description: with Pack Rat in the graveyard and Necrotic Ooze in play you make copies of the ooze, not Pack rat. The ooze replaces any self-referential text in the activated abilities with its own name.

September 3, 2017
5:42 p.m.

Ill-gotten gains is a pet card of mine because like Xiahou Dun, you can get any cards back, including artifacts. It's some of the best recursion in black and simultaneously wrecks your opponents' hands too.

September 12, 2017
1:09 p.m.

And I actually did not know that this card existed. It is definitely a maybe. The deck already does a great job of getting stuff out of my graveyard, and I have other retrieval in the forms of Ill-Gotten Gains and Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed. However, redundancy is good in EDH. Thanks for the suggestion.

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